CHAPTER XI. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CAT. 



^ 1. The word " Psychology " has been so much used of late to 

 denote mental states only, that most readers will probably deem that 

 by the phrase " the psychology of the cat," the jihenomena of the 

 cat-mind — its feelings, imaginations, emotions, and instincts — are 

 exclusively referred to. 



These indeed will all be treated of in this chapter, but " Psy- 

 chology," according to its original conception, and according to the 

 most rational signification which can be given to the term, has a 

 very much wider meaning ; for it denotes the study of all the 

 activities, both simultaneous and successive, which any living 

 creature may exhibit. 



On account of the very peculiar nature of a certain number of 

 these — namely, all those which may be classed as " feelings " in the 

 ■\\adest sense of that word — it is practically impossible to study them 

 as they exist in any animal without some reference to our own 

 mental activities. The study of such activities as they take place 

 in ourselves, may be followed up in three modes : — 



(1.) By introspection, i.e., by the study of our own mental states, 



through our powers of reflection. 

 (2.) By the study of our fellow-men as they live and act (in 

 health and in disease) , drawing inferences from their words and 

 gestures as to the similarity between their feelings, emotions 

 and perceptions, and our own. 

 (3.) By examining facts of structure — anatomical conditions — ^in 

 order to investigate the relations which may exist between 

 different mental phenomena and corresponding (normal or 

 pathological) bodily conditions. 

 Such of our activities — such phenomena — as we know and can 

 know only by introspection, are called " suhjcdice" and they are 

 ministered to by the nervous system. That same system, however, 

 also ministers, as we have seen, to many other activities of which 

 introspection can give us no account, since they lie so deep that they 

 are beyond its ken. 



Now it is these subjective phenomena, or, at the most, these 

 together with the other activities to which the nervous system 



